act vs law

act

noun
  • A product of a legislative body, a statute. 

  • A display of behaviour. 

  • A display of behaviour meant to deceive. 

  • A division of a theatrical performance. 

  • Something done once and for all, as distinguished from a work. 

  • Any organized activity. 

  • A performer or performers in a show. 

  • A formal or official record of something done. 

  • The process of doing something. 

  • A thesis maintained in public, in some English universities, by a candidate for a degree, or to show the proficiency of a student. 

  • Something done, a deed. 

verb
  • Of a play: to be acted out (well or badly). 

  • To perform a theatrical role. 

  • To play (a role). 

  • To convey an appearance of being. 

  • To map via a homomorphism to a group of automorphisms (of). 

  • To feign. 

  • To do something. 

  • To have an effect (on). 

  • To behave in a certain manner for an indefinite length of time. 

  • To do something that causes a change binding on the doer. 

law

noun
  • The body of binding rules and regulations, customs, and standards established in a community by its legislative and judicial authorities. 

  • Any statement of the relation of acts and conditions to their consequences. 

  • A person or group that act(s) with authority to uphold such rules and order (for example, one or more police officers). 

  • The body of such rules that pertain to a particular topic. 

  • A mode of operation of the flight controls of a fly-by-wire aircraft. 

  • The profession that deals with such rules (as lawyers, judges, police officers, etc). 

  • Common law, as contrasted with equity. 

  • Jurisprudence, the field of knowledge which encompasses these rules. 

  • One of two metaphysical forces ruling the world in some fantasy settings, also called order, and opposed to chaos. 

  • Litigation; legal action (as a means of maintaining or restoring order, redressing wrongs, etc). 

  • A rule or principle regarding the construction of language or art. 

  • An allowance of distance or time (a head start) given to a weaker (human or animal) competitor in a race, to make the race more fair. 

  • Any rule that must or should be obeyed, concerning behaviours and their consequences. (Compare mores.) 

  • A statement (in physics, etc) of an (observed, established) order or sequence or relationship of phenomena which is invariable under certain conditions. (Compare theory.) 

  • A statement (of relation) that is true under specified conditions; a mathematical or logical rule. 

  • A binding regulation or custom established in a community in this way. 

  • The control and order brought about by the observance of such rules. 

  • One of the official rules of cricket as codified by the its (former) governing body, the MCC. 

  • An oath sworn before a court, especially disclaiming a debt. (Chiefly in the phrases "wager of law", "wage one's law", "perform one's law", "lose one's law".) 

  • A sound law; a regular change in the pronunciation of a language. 

verb
  • To prosecute or sue (someone), to litigate. 

  • To rule over (with a certain effect) by law; to govern. 

  • To enforce the law. 

  • To subject to legal restrictions. 

How often have the words act and law occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )